The Thanksgiving Turnaround
Luke 17:11-19

            In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

            Luke 17:15-16 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him – and he was a Samaritan.

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  A blessed Thanksgiving to you all!  We are here rightly on this eve of a National Day of Thanksgiving to receive from our Lord His gifts in the preaching of His Word, the proclamation of His Gospel, and the most precious gift of His very body and blood in Holy Communion.  In proper response to our Lord’s gracious gifts to us of forgiveness, life, salvation, and every other bodily need, we sing His Word responsively in the Psalmody and we praise Him with our lips in the hymns which teach and proclaim His love and blessings.  Spiritual and physical blessings most certainly abound from our good and gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In a way, we are connected with the ten lepers in our Gospel this evening, for they also received bountiful blessings from God.  So let us turn our attention to that text and have it speak to our situation.

The lepers in our text tonight surely would have been accustomed to seeing people turn away from them.  A person who had the disease of leprosy left others repulsed by their disfigurement, and people were rightly frightened at the prospect of becoming infected themselves from this highly contagious disease

These lepers had been forced to turn away from their previous lives.  Because of their disease they had been separated from family and friends; they had been forced into a life which was held together by the common bond of their affliction.  That’s what leper colonies were for – to gather up and quarantine all who were afflicted. 

The hideous disease of leprosy rendered these people unclean.  And according to Old Testament restrictions and prohibitions for lepers, they were not only excluded from being in the personal presence of their friends and family, but they were also excluded from the congregation of Israel and the temple.  They couldn’t even go to church.

But thankfully, along comes Jesus.  Jesus does not hide His face from the leper’s wretchedness.  He does not turn away in disgust like every other person would have done when they passed by.  Even though these lepers still kept their distance from Him, Jesus heard their cry for mercy as they called out to Him: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

Jesus heard their of Kyrie eleison.  He heard their cry for Him to have mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and kindness, and He answered them in a truly amazing way.  In fact, He told these lepers to act as if they had already been delivered from their disease.  He said, “Go show yourselves to the priests,” which was something people did only AFTER they were already cleansed and healed. 

The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament states clearly that a person who has been cured of leprosy was to present himself to the priest.  The priest would then examine such a person to determine whether or not he was actually healed.  And if the leprous person was indeed cured, very meticulous rituals were to be performed and appropriate sacrifices were to be offered.

The lepers in our text simply took Jesus at His word; they turned and headed off for the temple, just like He told them.  Luke tells us that “as they went, they were cleansed.”  The symptoms of leprosy had vanished.  It wasn’t a “normal” healing in that a remedy was administered, it took effect, and the slow process of recovery had begun.  No.  Their flesh had been restored instantly.  They had been made completely clean right away.  No recovery, no scars, no waiting for the scabs to dry up and fall off.  None of that.  They were the “victims,” if you will, of an out and out miracle.

You can imagine the rejoicing of these now former lepers.  Their ostracization was now gone, their quarantine was no longer required, and they could soon return to their families, friends, and most importantly, to church!  It would be easy to imagine all of them breaking out into song and maybe even dancing their way along in sheer gratitude and thanks.

But that wasn’t the case, was it?  Even though all ten men were cleansed, and all ten men were healed, and all ten men received the miracle, only one out of the ten turned around and returned to Jesus.  In fact, this one man would not have had access to the Jerusalem temple anyway, for he was a Samaritan.  And because he was a Samaritan he would have been excluded from the temple; he was an outcast.  And so it is this man who returned to Jesus.  Luke writes, “Now one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at His feet giving Him thanks.”

Thanksgiving is to turn around.  Thanksgiving is to return to the Lord who is the giver and source of every good and perfect gift.  And so this Samaritan turned around.  He returned to the Lord Jesus Christ who was and is both temple and priest.  He is the temple of God in the flesh.  He is the temple to which the Samaritan came, and it was a better temple than the one in Jerusalem, especially for this one man.  He returned to the only place where he could receive the priest’s declaration of “clean.”

In the Old Testament God had located His saving presence in the temple at Jerusalem.  But now He has located His presence in the flesh and blood of His Son.  In Colossians 2:9 St. Paul writes of Jesus, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”  This same Jesus is the high priest of our salvation.  By His blood shed on the cross He has cleansed us from our leprosy of sin.

Thanksgiving is to turn around; Thanksgiving is recognizing that every blessing we have been given comes to us through Jesus.

That is why we are here in church on this Thanksgiving Eve in November.  The Samaritan leper returned to Jesus because he knew that true and right thanksgiving takes place nowhere else than in the presence of the Lord who is the Source and Giver of all good and perfect gifts. 

We come, therefore, to where Jesus is.  He is here in the preaching of His Word; He is here speaking to us the words that bring healing to our hearts, words that take away the defilement of our sin.  He is here with His body and blood, feeding us with the food which alone satisfies our deepest hunger.  He s here in this place each and every Lord’s Day with all of His gifts lavished lovingly and generously upon us, His dear children.

Because of all this goodness, we can truly say that Thanksgiving is not so much about our giving as it is our receiving from the Lord the gifts He wills to give us.  This is why the Church prays in the Psalms, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever.  He gives food to every creature, He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call.”  Thanksgiving recognizes the Giver. 

Remember what you have learned in the Catechism’s explanation of the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.”  The highest form of thanksgiving then is, by God-given faith, acknowledging that all that we are and all that we have is a gift from our Heavenly Father.  That is why our Lord says to the Samaritan, “Rise and go. Your faith has made you well.” It is faith which recognizes that every good and perfect gift of our heavenly Father – gifts for body and gifts for soul – comes to us through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory both now and forever. Amen.